Know When Your Branding Is Amiss.
How's your logo? Do you wake up in the morning, kiss your spouse, turn off the alarm and say, "Wow, my business has a great logo!" If you don't find yourself with this quandary, you may want to run through this list:
- Is Your Over-All Design Obscure?
- Does Your Logo Have a Clichéd and Unoriginal Design?
- Do You Have Any File Formats Other Than a JPG?
- Is Your Design Overly Complicated?
- Does Your Design Have Too Many Colors?
- Does Your Logo Have More Than Two Typestyles?
- Was Your Logo Created By a Rookie Designer or a "Quick Design" company?
- Did you pay less than $150?
If you can say yes to two or more of these, give that logo of yours a good stare-down. Tell it to shape-up or ship out. If you are under-representing your business or company, you are shooting yourself in the foot in so many ways. Just like putting a suit and tie on for a business dinner function makes a better impression than wearing jeans and a t-shirt, so well-defined branding will speak tremendously for your company, even before any promotional or marketing material is read.
Quality Branding Is Costly, But Worth The Investment
The best logo artists in the world will charge between 1k and 5k for a logo. Think we're kidding? These people are worth their weight in salt and will give you EXACTLY what your business needs to grow. Naturally, not everyone can afford a logo designer of this caliber, and with the advent of today's "Quick-Design" logo companies the reason behind the need for using good designers has all but been lost:
- 19DollarLogos.com
- GotLogos.com
- TheLogoCompany.net
A quick rabbit trail shows us the saddest part behind companies like the ones above. Freelancer.com is just one of the offshore resources that make up the back bone of these companies' design services. As you know, ZakGraphix was affiliated with Network Solutions at one time. If you go to their website, you will find that Logo Design is actually a package they sell. In today's educational moment you will learn that Micah ran/made up the entire logo department for 6 months. Half-way through his supervisors decided that the 2+ week design time was unacceptable. They wanted logos turned around in 6 to 10 days, otherwise - "The logo design service isn't profitable." With their prices starting at $400 dollars, this statement never made any sense, especially when Micah also was a web designer and developer as well.
Network Solution's uses Account Managers to do all their work. They mask having to speak with a real logo designer because, in fact, the company doesn't have any logo designers. They go to site's like Freelancer.com or Elance.com and bid on logos created by the applicants. This is still true today. The main issue with this is most of these sites is the freelance designers are all living in foreign countries, and the don't mind getting paid $25 to $45 US for hours worth of work.
If you are truly interested in getting an inexpensive logo, ZakGraphix recommends going to Elancer.com and Freelancer.com directly and do your own bidding. Hopefully you will get a good logo and a wonderful price, and it will work moderately well with your company's marketing strategies! For the sake of all that is American, please cut out these companies that pose as design firms but are nothing more than middlemen.
Keep It Local. Keep It American.
Is it sad that we even have to recommend that? First, keeping it American maintains our economic strength. For those who actually paid attention in economics, there is only so much value in our country, and as we keep passing that value outside the US, our country's economic continues to weaken. The rest of the reasons are quite simple and very, very true:
- Outsourcing has no business/relationship investment.
- Outsourcing design work is more difficult than calling tech-support.
- Outsourced work quality is hit and miss.
- Companies that outsource have 1 primary goal, and it isn't your satisfaction.
An article on Forbes.com demonstrates quite effectively how painful using outsourced services can be. Having been employed with companies like Network Solutions, these tales of pain and suffering were a common occurrence, and it still rings true today. Sure offshore designers and developers only need $5 to $8 per hour for their work, but the pain an suffering you will receive from dealing with them is far more damaging than the investment into a local, professional logo or website designer/developer.
Invest In Your Business
Borrowing from our 1st item in the list above, by using local design services you are investing in your company and investing in your local community. Business networking is the backbone of American business and those companies that fail to "keep it local" will discover the pains of getting business through less-effective forms of marketing. To put it bluntly, business is all about relationships. ZakGraphix can attest to this, thus we are involved in many areas of our community — Rotary, BNI, our local Chamber of Commerce, etc.
Investing on your business with local business will also invest in yourself. Keeping money local will help bring people and the businesses they represent to your door. You invest in their lives and they will return the favor. Using local design firms will allow these design firms to purchase your services in return!
Wrapping Up
Proper Logo Design is critical to make your business' s marketing effective. Naturally, like we said before Business Networking is the backbone of our economy, but quality branding is effective even with this form of marketing! So put on that suite and tie. Trash that old logo and invest in your business.
ZakGraphix - "Raising the Standard of Design, One Website at a Time."
Micah Zak
St. Louis Web Design - ZakGraphix.com